For International Women's Day, Visma Netherlands wanted a video that goes beyond a symbolic gesture. The idea: expose just how large the blind spot is when it comes to women in tech. Everyone knows Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. But the women who laid the foundations for much of what they built have been largely forgotten.
The video spotlights three pioneers. Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first algorithm in the nineteenth century and laid the groundwork for modern programming. Grace Hopper, who developed the first compiler and without whom software development would look fundamentally different today. And Hedy Lamarr, whose work on frequency-hopping was the direct precursor to the wifi and bluetooth we rely on now.
The message is powerful yet understated: tech as we know it exists because of these women. It was my job to make that story land visually.
Visma is one of Europe's largest software companies, originally founded in Norway and now active in more than twenty countries. With solutions for financial management, HRM and e-government, it serves both small businesses and large public organizations. In the Netherlands, Visma operates through a network of over fifty specialized companies. It is an organization that takes technology seriously, and makes no secret of it.
The video is built in a collage style, drawn from the visual language of editorial news channels like Vox. Historical photographs, newspaper clippings and archival documents are woven together with fluid digital animation. That combination gives the video a sense of weight and authenticity, while the motion brings the material to life and draws the line to the present day.
Color and typography align fully with Visma's brand identity, keeping the video recognizably on-brand without letting that get in the way of the story it tells.
"Lennert understood the weight of the subject immediately and translated it into something that really stays with you. The mix of archive and animation worked exactly as we had hoped."
Isabelle Ismene
Producer @ Videobird